You are here:HomeRay Kurzweil VideosSony Pictures Entertainment | Top thinkers including Google’s Ray Kurzweil join After Earth stars Jaden and Will Smith to talk about the future in “After Earth Day” Google hangout

Sony Pictures Entertainment | Top thinkers including Google’s Ray Kurzweil join After Earth stars Jaden and Will Smith to talk about the future in “After Earth Day” Google hangout

CULVER CITY, Calif., April 22, 2013 – In advance of the nationwide release of After Earth, the highly anticipated film in theaters May 31, Columbia Pictures is teaming up with Google for a live “After Earth Day” Google+ Hangout tomorrow, April 23 – the day after Earth Day. The Google+ Hangout brings together some of the world’s most renowned thinkers, inventors, authors, and futurists to discuss the film’s themes and the future of our planet.

The After Earth Day Google+ Hangout will be moderated by futurist Ray Kurzweil, Google’s director of engineering. Joining Kurzweil will be Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and the co-founder of Tesla Motors and PayPal; the environmental advocate, explorer and filmmaker Alexandra Cousteau, granddaughter of Jacques-Yves Cousteau; NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, an Indian American astronaut and a United States Navy officer who holds the record for longest space flight by a woman; and Jaden Smith and Will Smith, the stars of After Earth. On the literal day after Earth Day, they will discuss the future that awaits the human race on Planet Earth, in the context of the overall themes of the action-adventure. After Earth will inspire a conversation focusing on the important questions we face about the present state of the planet, the future, and the environment. The participants will also explore the interaction of technology development, space travel, and ecological preservation.

The Google+ Hangout will take place tomorrow, April 23, at 12 noon Eastern / 9 a.m. Pacific. Moviegoers can tune in to the live Google+ Hangout at YouTube.com/AfterEarth, as well as Google.com/+AfterEarth where fans are invited to submit their questions for a chance to have them answered by the panelists.

About After Earth

In After Earth, a crash landing leaves teenager Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith) and his legendary father Cypher (Will Smith) stranded on Earth 1,000 years after cataclysmic events forced humanity’s escape. With Cypher critically injured, Kitai must embark on a perilous journey to signal for help, facing uncharted terrain, evolved animal species that now rule the planet, and an unstoppable alien creature that escaped during the crash. Father and son must learn to work together and trust one another if they want any chance of returning home.

Columbia Pictures presents an Overbrook Entertainment/Blinding Edge Pictures production directed by M. Night Shyamalan from a screenplay by Gary Whitta and M. Night Shyamalan and a story by Will Smith, and produced by Caleeb Pinkett, Jada Pinkett Smith & Will Smith, James Lassiter, and M. Night Shyamalan.

About Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) is a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation. SPE’s global operations encompass motion picture production, acquisition and distribution; television production, acquisition and distribution; television networks; digital content creation and distribution; operation of studio facilities; and development of new entertainment products, services and technologies. For additional information, go to http://www.sonypictures.com

Comments (5)

To me this appears a perfectly instrumented example of transhumanist propaganda.I am very interested in transhumanism in general. Ray and Elon are really impressive people to me. But I can’t avoid seeing the connections between Ray proposing an energy plan for US based on solar energy and Elon Launching a solar city.The connection between Nasa，SpaceX, Singularity university and the recent urge to explore Mars…
SU buying Sing summit, Singhub…
It appears the future foreseen by Ray is an idea too powerfull to avoid making profit of it for entrepreneurs such as Elon.

It’s funny to listen to everyones perspective here.. I’m a long haired hippy. I’ve let my hair grow to it’s natural length since I was eleven. It’s actually a protest to the insanity of modern society. The sixties were full of protests against our self destructive nature. The rhetoric was so much stronger then than what I’m hearing here. All the same issues are prevalent today. There was a strong push to get back to nature and love planet earth. When I listen to these halting cadenced half hearted responses it seems like a pale reflection of the passion of my generation, yet the situation is far more grim now. If the day is to be saved by the enthusiasm of the latest generation then I feel we have lost momentum. I have little faith in the common mans ability to affect these issues. I am however very optimistic in relation to the problems that confront us. Fortunately I think technology will reverse all these problems and in an amazingly short period of time. So in closing I don’t find resonance with the premise of the movie and I found the comentary to be amazing lame and shallow. In 1972 I was in sixth grade and I had a far greater understanding of earth woes and possible remedies than Jaden has, and I wasn’t on the set of a film dedicated to raising public awareness to environmental issues. Amazingly disappointing to see this. Fortunately our future is quite bright! (miss dayglo VW mini buses, peace, love, Woodstock, and other hippie virtues.)

For me this was fun to watch and have to give a big thumbs up to Ray to host this and bring these particular people together. I hope they can do more of these type of talks in the near future!!… a creative mix of talking about the movie and yet still addressing important issues and even involving the younger generation that likely has to clean up our mess and pay the costs of our generation’s self indulgent abuse of our environment since the industrial revolution.

Love to hear more about what personal projects that Will Smith is involved in and love to hear more from Elon Musk and also Alexandra Cousteau.

Some of the ideas discussed in this Hangout are disturbing. Dr Joanna Macy addresses one of my core concerns more succinctly than I could:

“Ours is an Industrial Growth Society…if there is to be a liveable world for those who come after us, it will be because we have managed to make the transition from the Industrial Growth Society to a Life-Sustaining Society…While the agricultural revolution took centuries, and the industrial revolution took generations, this ecological revolution has to happen within a matter of a few years. It has to be more comprehensive – involving not only the political economy, but the habits and values that foster it.”

If we’re to transition from ecocidal industrial growth to a life-sustaining society we humans will have to establish a way of living which achieves an “ongoing ecological balance and permanent interdependence between humans, all other life forms and the life support systems of the earth”. Dr Glenn Albrecht terms this “Sumbiosity”.

If we’re to avoid a real After Earth scenario we’ll have to establish an ecological society based on “a process of active invention and creation on the part of humans to achieve and conserve a state of sumbiosity where humans and other life forms can live together indefinitely in mutually supporting relationships.” Albrecht calls this “Sumbiosic Development”.

The young generation should not be burdened with this task. We adults created this mess and we must all work together to get out of it. Technological fixes and spacefaring are not the answer. We must take our heads out of the sand, face up to what we’re doing to the planetary ecosystems and to each other, and – to borrow from Dr Riane Eisler’s book ‘The Real Wealth of Nations’ – implement caring, partnership-based social, economic and political systems which value the long-term integrity and biodiversity of the Earth’s ecology over consumerism and short-term profits.

International legislation to criminalise ecocide – as proposed by barrister Polly Higgins – would be a step in the right direction.